360 Group Founder says his company purchased 1,000 Huawei AI chips even before Baidu

At China’s 2023 World Internet Summit, the Founder and CEO of 360 Group, Zhou Hongyi said that his company purchased 1,000 AI chips from Huawei even before Baidu. The latest statement from Zhou came after Reuters reported about the deal between Huawei and Baidu for the new AI chip.

Baidu has ordered at least 1,600 Ascend 910B AI chips. As of October, the Chinese tech company has delivered about 60% of the overall orders and the pending units of AI chips will be delivered by the end of this year.

Zhou said that 360 Group is cooperating with Huawei to use the full power of Ascend 910B. He also said that it would be difficult to develop AI in China without Huawei.

In the past month, China’s iFlytek also announced cooperation with Huawei for its AI chip. Both of these companies are working in the field of AI and developing new AI platforms for the industry.

iFlytek also said that the new Huawei Ascend 910B is comparable to Nvidia’s A100 AI chip. The two parties are actively engaging in a new “Star One” project for large language model technologies.

In October this year, the US announced a ban on AI chip export to Chinese companies. However, the US Commerce Department confirmed that his ban applies only to advanced chipsets.

At the center of the discussion, Nvidia is likely to have a massive impact on revenue due to this new export restriction. Meanwhile, the situation has come up as a big opportunity for Huawei to claim a new business.

The revelation of purchasing 1000 AI chips by the 360 Group chief suggests that Chinese AI industry players are keen on getting AI chip products from Huawei.

(source)